U.S. lays out Syria intelligence, may harm diplomacy

By Arshad Mohammed and Paul Eckert

Reuters

Thursday, April 24, 2008

WASHINGTON— The United States laid out intelligence on Thursday it believes shows North Korea helped Syria build a suspected nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel last year, a step that may complicate its diplomacy both on the Korean Peninsula and in the Middle East.

In breaking its official silence on the mysterious September 6 Israeli air strike, the Bush administration is taking the risk that Syria could be angered by the public disclosures and could seek to retaliate against Israel.

The closed-door briefings to U.S. lawmakers could also make it harder for the United States to carry out a multilateral agreement under which North Korea promised to disclose all of its nuclear programs and, ultimately, to abandon them and any nuclear weapons it may have.

While lawmakers declined to discuss the intelligence after the briefings, some described them as "compelling.

A U.S. official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to discuss classified matters, said that among the intelligence the United States has was an image of what appeared to be people of Korean descent at the facility.

However, the official stressed this image was only part of a wider array of information gathered from multiple sources on the suspected cooperation between Syria and North Korea.

While some lawmakers last year got classified information about the September 6 Israeli air strike, they voiced bitterness that the administration had only shared the intelligence more widely nearly eight months after the incident.

Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Ja'afari told reporters on Wednesday that "there was no Syria-North Korea cooperation whatsoever in Syria. We deny these rumors."

Israeli officials have feared that broad disclosure of the air strike and information that prompted it could trigger a backlash from Syria.

It is also possible that the briefings could complicate progress in a multilateral effort to get North Korea to make a "complete and correct" declaration of all its nuclear programs as a step toward abandoning them.

'NO CREDIBILITY'

Pyongyang missed a December 31 deadline to make the declaration and some lawmakers are skeptical that a tentative agreement on how it may address concerns about any uranium enrichment program and nuclear proliferation will yield full disclosure.

U.S. President George W. Bush has lost the support of some fellow Republicans on the North Korea deal, but the Democrats who control Congress by and large appear to be more supportive of the path he is following.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House of Representatives intelligence committee, bluntly said after a briefing on the issue that the administration had lost the trust of many lawmakers.

"This administration has no credibility on North Korea," he told Reuters. "A lot of us are beginning to become concerned that the administration is moving away from getting a solid policy solution to 'let's make a deal' -- regardless of how bad it may be."

But Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, backed Bush's approach.

"The publicly reported details about nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Syria are disturbing. But I don't think they provide a reason to suspend discussions with the North Koreans," he said in a statement.

"In the past year or so, the administration's North Korea policy has pursued a more productive path: taking steps toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in the context of the six-party Talks," he said. "We should stick with that path."

A U.S. official who spoke on condition he not be named said the administration had told North Korea that the disclosures were coming and argued that they increased the pressure on Pyongyang to produce a complete declaration.

"We let them know that this was coming," said the U.S. official. "We believe it has strengthened whatever declaration we are going to get on the proliferation concerns ... because we said 'Look, we know this and there is a new floor that has been established for whatever declaration you provide."